Superintendent’s View: District works to make facilities meet demands of education

Saturday

May 3, 2014 at 3:30 PM

By Ehren Jarrett

Local school restructuring plans often are launched on the public like the Great Oz. One day, a map emerges from behind the curtain, with little explanation about how it was created. The “why,” though, is clear: because we’re broke.

We in the Rockford Public Schools are doing it differently this time, and for a different reason.

We’re not acting out of financial necessity but educational sustainability. Since last fall, our board members, staff and community groups have developed guiding principles for a better way to deliver education. We have held dozens of meetings open to the public. And we are continuing to seek your feedback. We will hold 39 meetings in the next three weeks so that you can tell us what you think.

Our plans grew out of these beliefs:

Children should attend schools closest to where they live. Our current method of assigning students to schools is not based on zones only. To fill seats in some schools, we have added students in programs such as bilingual and early childhood.

Our early childhood students, for example, are currently enrolled in 10 sites. The new plan puts them in four centers. Building capacity — not proximity — has also dictated where we send our bilingual students. Our new plan allows bilingual students to go to school closer to where they live, instead of being bused to a school where there’s room. That helps us reduce our transportation costs and, more importantly, allows us to provide more support and resources to students.

Larger schools allow more resources for students. The optimal size for an elementary school is between 475-633 students, or three to four classes per grade level. Our district has schools as small as 200 or 300 students, or two classes per grade level. Having schools that small forces the sharing of staff such as nurses, art and music teachers, and social workers. We call these professionals “itinerant,” and it’s just as it sounds. Their valuable time is spent traveling from school to school rather than providing full-time help to students. We believe students deserve full-time staff.

Our facilities cannot keep up with the demands of today’s education. We have too many elementary buildings to maintain well, and we have too many elementary school buildings relative to districts our size. Our Facilities Task Force committee evaluated each school for educational adequacy (factors such as indoor air quality, sound and lighting) the condition of the facility and the amount of deferred maintenance. Then, we considered a school’s ability to meet the needs of 21st century education, such as flexible work spaces, media centers and libraries.

The work was not easy. We do not presume that we got it perfect — only that we did it in the best interests of students and in recognition that our resources — your resources — are limited.

The easy thing would have been to do nothing, but that would not be fair to the students or to the taxpayers of the Rockford Public Schools.

We are not wizards; we are your partners. Please come to our meetings. Please help us find a better way to deliver a quality education for the citizens of the future.

Dr. Ehren Jarrett is superintendent of the Rockford Public Schools. To find a meeting convenient for you to attend, please go to rps205.com/better schools.